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Thursday, April 17, 2014

Light My World - guest post by Zee Monodee

We're in for a real treat today, because Zee Monodee has dropped by today to talk about her inspiration for her latest release, Light My World. This post couldn't have come at a better time, because I woke up to snow on my car yesterday. In the middle of April. Let's all go on an island vacation, shall we?

What was the inspiration behind LIGHT MY
WORLD?

I’ve always been a goner for romantic
comedies. Be it in books or movies, romcoms are my staple of comfort food for
the soul. Love the funny, the over the top, the quirky, and the romance, of
course...which more often than not in romcoms, happens when and with who you
least expect.

Diya Hemant, the heroine of Light My
World, came to me like a rocket-propelled grenade of enthusiasm and good cheer.
She suddenly made her appearance known, with a huge bang, in her sister Lara’s
story, The Other Side (book 1 in the trilogy).

I have to admit Diya was tiresome,
draining, and so bright she could induce a migraine in anyone....

Which led me to thinking – this would
probably be the case for any sensible man she meets. We all know we’re on our
best behavior when on a date, but those other times in real life? You are who
you are, no pretenses and no facades. So the man who met her in real life would
be treated to that overwhelming personality.

I thus had the makings of a romantic
comedy, but then, too – how to make it funny? Right then, it looked like the
premise for a chick lit with a ditzy heroine at the center. So not what I
wanted for this book – it should be balanced, comic on both sides.

Then the brainwave hit – romcom trope:
the hero and heroine meet, and both go, “You!?”

It’s obvious the other is the last
person they want to see/meet/encounter again, and that usually includes intense
mutual dislike between them.

I saw Diya and Trent, the hero in the
story, as having that kind of second meeting. Simply a question now of making
that first meeting totally off the charts in all manner of awful yet funny
happenings. And what’s worse than a (thank goodness harmless!) car accident
where neither will accept to take the blame?

From there on, it became a journey of
“what else other aggravation can I shoot onto them?”. Tons of fun, lots of
laughs...that I hope my readers will feel and enjoy, too.

From Mauritius with love,

Zee

Blurb:

It
is a truth universally acknowledged that to find a prince, a girl has to kiss a
few frogs along the way. But what happens when a modern-day princess comes
across…an ogre?

So what if a girl has to
kiss a few frogs to find her prince?

Tired
of her Indian-origin mother’s relentless matchmaking, Diya Hemant is determined
to find her Prince Charming on her terms. Armed with a definitive list of
requirements, she is sure she’ll know her man when she meets him…

But looking and finding are
two different things, especially on the tiny island of Mauritius…

When
her path crosses surly British widower Trent Garrison’s, it’s hate at first
sight. And though fate keeps pitting her against him, she’s certain he can’t be
turned into a frog let alone a prince.

Can
this modern-day princess overcome her own expectations and see beyond the ogre
to the man beneath?

Excerpt:

Still squatting in front of the children, Diya peeked up for
a first glance of him.

Brown linen trousers covered his long legs, and she craned
her neck to take in his tall body and broad chest. He’d rolled the sleeves of
his cream-coloured shirt to his elbows, revealing big, powerful-looking hands
and strong forearms dusted in dark hairs. A tense, corded neck lay visible
beneath the open collar of the shirt, with a slightly pointed chin above it.
Strong jaw, and chiselled, taut, handsome features. Deep-set grey eyes, very
much like the elder boy’s, squinted at her beneath thick eyebrows the same hue
as the neatly trimmed dark hair on his head.

Diya gaped. This hulking Adonis was her neighbour?

He has offspring to
boot, whispered a little voice.

She snorted under her breath. Just her luck, again. He was
taken. What is it with this weekend from
hell?

“You?”

The word rolled off the Greek god’s tongue, and the British
accent and disbelieving tone dripping with spite jolted her like an electric
current.

This man, and the savage who’d hit her car the day before,
were the same person.

The surprise zinged through her; she gasped, and brought her
hand up to cover her mouth.

In doing so, she lost her balance and toppled over onto her
arse to lay flat on her back. Pain from hitting the hard marble erupted all
along her spine, and she caught herself before the back of her head smashed
into the floor. Quick save, and thank goodness most of the broken glass lay in
her flat, and not in the lobby. She’d have been in for some major injury,
otherwise.

“Are you okay, miss?” a little voice asked.

Would this nightmare ever end? She must appear like an
undignified heap, and there went all the leverage she could bring to this
meeting. Humiliation piled onto her anger at being caught in such a stupid
position, in front of him, no less.

“No, I’m not okay.” She glared at the oaf. “It’s all because
of you, you beast.”

“Dad?” Matthew asked. “What’s he done?”

Confirmation he was the boys’ father. Great. Could
something, anything, go right for her?

“Oh, forget it,” she said as her voice broke.

Shoot, she wouldn’t cry, would she?

“Of all the people in the
world….”

He spoke the words softly. The disbelief in them wiped away
her feelings of self-pity, and hurt like a stab, in the same go.

Was he rude by nature, or did he always itch for a fight?
Either way, she wouldn’t let him off the hook.

“What?” she asked. “Go on. What were you gonna say?”

“Nothing,” he said through clenched teeth.

“It’s not nothing. So don’t be a chicken. Say it.”

He remained stubbornly silent.

She glowered up at him. “So?”

He tightened his jaw. “You’re the one person I hoped to
never meet again.”

This had to strike beyond rude. What a bastard.

Outrage at his insult filled her, but the distaste for him
and his cavemen-like ways won the battle. “Same here, mate.”

“You know each other?” Matthew asked as he peered back and
forth at them.

The
Island Girls trilogy follows the 3 Hemant sisters – Lara, Neha, Diya – over the
span of the 2000-2010 decade, chronicling the changing face of the Mauritian
society over that crucial period.Book 2, Light My World, is Diya’s
hilarious quest to find Prince Charming in the sea of frogs that is Mauritius
(well, what it is according to her
perception!). Follow her on this desperate mission!

About the Author:

Stories about love, life, relationships... in a melting-pot of culture

Zee is an author who grew up on a fence – on one side there was modernity
and the global world, on the other there was culture and traditions. Putting up
with the culture for half of her life, one day she decided she'd stand tall on
her wall and dip toes every now and then into both sides of her
non-conventional upbringing.

From this resolution spanned a world of adaptation and learning to live
on said wall. The realization also came that many other young women of the
world were on their own fence.

This particular position became her favourite when she decided to pursue her
lifelong dream of writing – her heroines all sit 'on a fence', whether cultural
or societal, in today's world or in times past, and face dilemmas about life
and love.

Hailing from the multicultural island of Mauritius,
Zee is a degree holder in Communications Science. She is a head-over-heels wife,
in-over-her-head mum to a tween son, best-buddy-stepmum to a teenage lad, an
incompetent domestic goddess, eternal dreamer, and an absolute, shameless
bookholic. When she isn’t penning more stories and/or managing the Ubuntu line
at Decadent Publishing, you can bet you’ll find her with her nose in her
tablet, ‘drinking in’ a good book.

About Me

Thea Landen lives in New York with her husband
and two children. Though she reads and writes in nearly all genres, she has a special
fondness for science fiction and fantasy and anything that pushes the
imagination beyond its usual limits. When she’s not writing, or thinking about
writing, her hands and mind are occupied by either yarn crafts or role-playing
games.